These long-buried marine fossils originated from the prehistoric giant sized 18-metre-long megalodon.
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A beachgoer has found several massive shark teeth on the shore of North Topsail Beach in North Carolina.
Cynthia Crane, director of the nearby Aurora Fossils Museum, identified the find as belonging to the colossal prehistoric fish, an ancestor of the modern-day great white shark.
Apparently the North Carolina coast is something of a “hotspot” for ancient fossilised sharks, but high tides, recent rains, and extreme weather means teeth have been washing up in record numbers.
Other tooth findings indicate that the Megalodon weighed up to 30 times as much as today’s Great White Shark at a hefty 70 to 100 tons.
The study concluded the mega-shark grew bigger and bigger over a 14-million year evolutionary span, though researchers are still unclear why the shark continued to grow. It is supposed that the large size of the shark might have made them more vulnerable to extinction.
“When you have a very large organism like Megalodon, that can be very good or bad”, said co-author Catalina Pimiento, at the time when the study was released.
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It was relatively recently – a few hundred years ago – that humans have even known what they are looking at when shark teeth come ashore.
